Recently, technology companies have announced that 30 seconds of someone's conversation is enough to clone their voice and transmit any message with the cloned voice.
What if someone says that we have sent a voice message accepting a contract for the provision of services via telephone? What if we ask for the audio and it turns out that it sounds like we are ourselves?
Without a doubt, all these situations are perfectly feasible with current technology. There are companies in the market that already advertise this capacity (e.g. Aflorithmics Labs or Vicomtech), technology currently allows us to clone our voice with only thirty seconds of conversation. The system is not simple, Artificial Intelligence is applied through automated mastering in the cloud, in a short moment of time we already have the application parameterized to clone the initial subject's voice.
In short, a cloned voice is a voice exactly the same as ours, with our tone, timbre, accent, rhythm, and whoever has control of said cloned voice will have the ability to emit messages and communications exactly like us, but without our participation. Recently, a television advertisement for a well-known beer brand reproduced not only the voice but also the image of a famous folk artist who died decades ago.
It is evident that the use of our cloned voice can have multiple applications, some legitimate, others of doubtful legality and on certain occasions manifestly illegitimate.
It should be noted that these technological advances on the cloning of the voice coincide in time, (and it is not by chance), with the evolution of the voice as a digital interface, the voice has taken on a nature in terms of security system and interface communication with electronic devices, applications such as Siri or Ok Google, now allow us to manage our home automation or any other digital activity simply with voice commands.
But this ease of management by voice can also entail significant risks in the case of illegitimate or illegal cloning, since anyone can send messages or impersonate us without limitations, given these risks, what would be the means of legal protection?
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In principle, and go ahead, that in terms of privacy, voice is an unquestionable personal data, (RGPD art. 4.1) since it identifies us in a unique and differentiating way.
The strongest form of protection against the most serious crimes is the field of criminal law. It is evident that the impersonation of personality through voice cloning can be an illegal act of those contemplated in article 401 of the Penal Code. Also the cloning of the voice can be. An ideal element to make enough deception in the crime of fraud. The famous CEO scam, can acquire very dangerous derivatives in the case of the voice is indeed that of our Boss and asks us to make a transfer to an unknown bank account (if it is already a type of common scam by mail, now adding the cloned voice, already takes on a frankly dangerous look). It could also be a crime to use the cloned voice of an announcer for commercial actions or advertising exploitation without authorization (art. 270 et seq. CP), for example making a commercial announcement with the exact voice of a famous announcer, but without your participation or authorization.
In the civil aspect, we could suppose the realization of activities of special media projection, let's imagine a public figure who makes incendiary statements against another person from the entertainment world ... we can imagine the impact they can have on social networks, and as a consequence on the public image of the person who made such statements. But ... that person has not been guilty of anything, on the contrary he has been the victim of an impersonation that has diminished his image and his honor. Apart from the criminal actions that may be filed, the civil actions contemplated in Law 1/82, on civil protection of the right to honor, image and privacy, would also fit. Said norm allows the filing of the corresponding legal claims including in the same the damages caused, including the consequential damage and the loss of profits that may occur due to the termination of advertising contracts and the like.
Finally, we would have administrative protection, specifically when dealing with the voice of a personal data, its capture, processing and subsequent use will be subject to the provisions of the European Data Protection Regulation and by the Organic Law on Data Protection and Guarantees of Digital Rights, together with its complementary and / or concordant legislation.
At this point, it should be noted, as we have already commented, that although criminal actions can have consequences of harsh prison sentences or in civil cases we can have situations of important economic compensation, all of this is overshadowed by the sanctioning capacity that it grants the RGPD to the competent control authorities, in Spain, to the AEPD...
Data protection penalties can in the most serious cases reach 20 million euros or 4% of the global turnover of the offender. In these circumstances we can find that a very serious infringement in terms of data protection such as the lack of consent in the cloning treatment, where an economic benefit has been obtained, may entail millionaire penalties.
In any case, it seems clear that the voice as an element of communication will lead to many doubts about authorship and not manipulation. If we are talking about cloning, we will be in front of an exact copy of our voice, therefore it will only be possible to distinguish the possible manipulations by highly qualified computer experts, here we recommend visiting the website of the Professional Association of Computer Experts (ASPEI), www.aspei.es
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